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Friday, August 23, 2013

Top Five Most Unsettling Things Adults Have Done With Children's Toys

Top Five Most Unsettling Things Adults Have Done With Children's Toys

Children's toys are fun. Adult toys are even more fun, but they lack the innocence and idiocy that makes Toys R Us so fucking impossible to leave. In the right tiny hands, a small plastic action figure or doll can become a living breathing fairy, a superhero, or a child's best friend (just me?). In the wrong hands, however, they can become the stuff of nightmares. We're talking horrors that would make Cthulu scream 'My eyes! My eyes!' (all 24 of them) and crawl his way back into his hell dimension just to calm the fuck down. Unsettling nightmares just like these...

5. Over-exuberance Towards Small Pink Horses (Brony's)

Hug it all you want. It can't hug you back.

I know, I know. Including these guys is so obvious, it's almost insulting. Of course they're unsettling. The juxtaposition of adult males with unicorns and a girl's toy is a recipe for creep (or an annual NAMBLA meeting). But how could I not include them? Somewhere, there's an ordinance that says that anytime you create an internet list of unsettling people, Bronies shall appear on it. And if there isn't, I'm sure there soon will be. These guys should have their own watch-list because, seriously, if you have a daughter (or horse), would you want to live near one of them?

I heard a radio interview with the organizer for one of the many conventions (Yes, they happen frequently and in many places. Probably near you. Probably right now. How's that for a morning dose of 'ewwwwwww!'?). I was expecting a deranged lunatic frothing at the mouth like a Plushy let loose in the stuffing machine at Build-a-Bear, but he wasn't. He was a Masters Degree student who spoke cogently and articulately about his fandom. And he was well-rounded with other interests in sports, literature, and of course other cartoons. And you think that might have done a little to reassure me about these guys, but it didn't. In fact, it had the opposite effect.

You know who else was smart, well-spoken, and passionate about his interests? Hannibal Lechter, that's who. And he was the scariest fucking psycho in a movie wall-papered with lunatics. Lock me away with Migs anyday. Just not Hannibal. And fuck, just not a Brony.

4. Hoarding (The Beanie Baby Dad)If you're old enough to use the internet without adult supervision (did you know there's a lot of porn out there? I wish someone had told me sooner.), then odds are you remember beanie babies.

The hat does not make this thing any more fun.

Beanie babies are quite possibly the blandest piece of crap ever manufactured. It's a fucking bean bag with a disinterested animal's face on it. What does a kid do with a beanie baby after he's hurled it at his sister's head? Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

And there's a reason for that. It was marketed to adults. TY, the geniuses behind this abomination, took one look at the Franklin Mint and thought, you know what would make collecting limited edition plates more fun...if they weren't plates. And also they had a lot of cloth and beans lying around. The rest is history.

Beanie babies were released in "limited quantities" (i.e., act now or you'll be the only douche on your street without Fuzzy the Spitting Llama). They even restricted how many you could buy at a time. And for a while, the formula worked. People just ate this shit up and they sold for outrageous amounts. TY even made a buttload of cash (i.e., more than an armload, less than a colon-fill) selling cases to protect the tags on their stuffed animals. Let me say that again. They sold cases to protect the tags. You know, the first thing a kid (or sane person) rips off something when they first buy it. Shit, even a damn FBI warning isn't enough to stop people ripping the tags off mattresses. But then the FBI never reckoned with the passion of beanie baby collectors.

But eventually, the demand bottomed-- TY got greedy and over-saturated the market and people got predictably bored with the product. I mean how many fucking iterations of a platypus does any adult really need?

Just one. This guy. His name is Perry and he's awesome.

The end-result--100,000 Ebay auctions for beanie babies and two people bidding. But no harm, no foul. Fads come and go. People get caught up in stupid shit all the time, right?

This explains Menudo. But not the geri-curls.

I mean, it's not like anyone blew their life-savings and children's future on this stuff.

Meet Chris Robinson. He blew his children's future and life-savings on this stuff.

In this wonderful video created by one of Chris's children (who's not bitter at all, by the way), he documents his dad's descent into beanie-filled madness and how his father did his damndest to take everyone down with them.

I could point out the forced daily trips to every toy story in a hundred-mile radius of the family (henceforth known as the Trail of Tears) just so dad could pick up multiple copies of Clancy the Cow (special double-udder collectible). I could point out the mother recalling her husband's hobby through clenched teeth or the vague insinuation that it was all little Chris Jr.s fault for wanting one when he was six in the first place. But why not let the video just speak for itself? Watch the whole thing. I guarantee you'll feel a lot better about your life-choices afterwards.

The video does manage to end on a positive note. Chris is hopeful that in another 20 years the market will rebound and Beanies will become collectible again. Now that, my friend, is a future I don't want to live in.

3. Too Much Time on One's Hands (Re-born Dolls)

As if dolls weren't creepy enough, these doll creators thought, fuck I can do better than that. These "artists" (the quotes are mine), take disembodied doll limbs and faces, then meticulously add lifelike hair and paint, until the result looks something like this.

Fuck. Just fuck. Better get the eyeball bleach.

They even add weight to the damn things so they have the right feel of a baby. If you're like me, you're picturing an artist's workshop with a giant cartoon-like scale with a baby on one side and one of those plastic nightmares in the other. The real baby is not pleased.

Not creepy enough for you? The most popular reason people order these custom dolls? To create a lifelike representation of a dead child.

Yeah, so they're possessed too.

2. Taking Dress-Up Way Too Far (Living Barbie Doll)
A lot has been discussed about Barbie and her unrealistic proportions. Someone even went so far as to PhotoShop models into Barbie-like proportions. The result, apart from being just fucking awesome and hot, was a woman who couldn't support the weight of her own boobs. I don't have a problem with this.
What does give me the heebies, is this girl.

She has the same soulless, dead eyes as my wife before 9am.

Her name is Valeria Lukyanova and she's Ukranian which sorta helps to explain what you're looking at, but in no way justifies it. She's been called a 'living Barbie doll girl' because, I don't know, she's got big boobs and blonde hair and tiny waist or something like that. To be honest, I didn't read the full article. I saw her picture and it reminded me of this singer I used to have the hots for so I Googled her. She's gained a lot of weight since and the only singing she does in a church choir. A small part of me died today and to be honest, who really gives two fucks about Valeria She has issues and dead eyes and a dad that probably never hugged her enough. Go strip or something. This hobby of yours is just plain weird.

1. Pornography (Lego Nude Sculptures)
If you've ever Googled 'Lego Nudes'(and I'm sure if you're reading this article, you have not only Googled it, you've put it in your saved searches), then you've probably been introduced to the works of Pierrick and his photographer Jean-Yves Lemoigne. Just in case you hadn't, here's a sampling:

No, you're not looking at pixilated porn from 1995. That's a naked woman bent over on a bed in a position that can only mean one of two things: 1) She's waiting for the plumber to finish up in the bathroom so she can pay off her bill the hard way or 2) She's doing yoga and her instructor taught her how to do it wrong. Terribly, terribly, wrong.

Are you as turned on as I am right now? Well, before you go shoving your dingus in that comely woman, think again. She's made out of the same material that can split your foot open by stepping on it in the middle of the night- Legos.

Let me say that again. This life-sized sex doll was built out of plastic Lego bricks. The same shit you built a kick-ass fort out of in fourth grade before your damn little sister knocked it over. And this wasn't made by one pervy creep in his dark basement for his own gawking pleasure. It was made by a professional sculptor and his professional photography buddy. Can you just imagine how this modeling session went?

"That's nice baby, but arch your back a little more. Pierrick, can you make her boobs bigger?"